Archives | Octavia Spencer

Ex-cop Mike Kendall (John Hawkes) discovers the body of a young woman and, in an act of self-redemption, becomes hellbent on finding the killer. While his un-couth and quirky detective style helps break open the case, his dogged determination unwittingly puts his sister (Octavia Spencer) and best friend (Anthony Anderson) in danger. [Synopsis courtesy of […]

A feisty foster kid’s outrageous scheme to be reunited with her birth mother has unintended consequences in The Great Gilly Hopkins, an entertaining film for the entire family. Gilly Hopkins (Sophie Nélisse) has seen more than her share of foster homes and has outwitted every family she has lived with. In an effort to escape […]

Beth Grant stars as “Willadean Winkler” a mother of two children who is trapped in a loveless marriage with “J.D. Winkler” (David Steen), a blue collar truck driver who is lost in a drunken haze of unachieved adolescent dreams of athletic glory. He blames Willi for his lack of success, the death of their “wild” daughter and turning their banished son gay. He controls her money, her friends and her actions through the often realized threat of physical violence.

Set in Mesquite, Texas, they live in a trailer park next to Willi’s best and only friend, “LaSonia” (Octavia Spencer), a lively character filled with much needed comic relief, wisdom and hope. Willi and LaSonia spend the afternoons watching Oprah, Jerry Springer and Judge Judy. Willi takes up Dr. Phil’s philosophy that, “what you believe you can achieve,” and in defiance of J.D. gets herself a secret job as a greeter at the Super Mart to give her life a much needed purpose.

Across the way the park’s newest resident, five-times married cocktail waitress “Rayleen Hobbs” (Dale Dickey), storms into their lives in her little camper shell. The tragically funny Rayleen has gotten a job at the local watering hole where she meets J.D. drinking the evening away before he heads home to criticize Willi for anything and everything she does.

The characters are brilliantly strung together, with the help of a sultry, intuitive “Blues Singer” (Debby Holiday) who encourages Willi through music to push for something more than the life J.D. allows for her. Explosive one-sided arguments filled with pain, lost dreams and anger erupt and build over time as Shores reveals the dangerous dance between the abused and the abuser they love and hate, until one disastrous night it goes too far and the lives of those in the trailer park will never the same. [Synopsis courtesy of official Facebook]

Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family’s struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around “the help”; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

Kate and Charlie like to have a good time. Their marriage thrives on a shared fondness for music, laughter… and getting smashed. When Kate’s partying spirals into hard-core asocial behavior, compromising her job as an elementary schoolteacher, something’s got to give. But change isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Sobriety means she will have to confront the lies she’s been spinning at work, her troubling relationship with her mother, and the nature of her bond with Charlie.

After denying a woman the extension she needs to keep her home, loan officer Christine Brown sees her once-promising life take a startling turn for the worse. Christine is convinced she’s been cursed by a Gypsy, but her boyfriend is skeptical. Her only hope seems to lie in a psychic who claims he can help her lift the curse and keep her soul from being dragged straight to hell.

In the animal city of Zootopia, a fast-talking fox who’s trying to make it big goes on the run when he’s framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Zootopia’s top cop, a self-righteous rabbit, is hot on his tail, but when both become targets of a conspiracy, they’re forced to team up and discover even natural enemies can become best friends.

Mo Lundy (Boyd Holbrook) is a man attempting to move past a brutal two-decade stint in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He spends his days caring for abused animals at a shelter while trying in vain to reintegrate into a world that feels utterly foreign to him. A chance encounter with Doris (Elizabeth Moss), an enigmatic kindred spirit equally scarred by violence, lands him in a situation where choosing to do the right thing means risking his hard-won freedom and his life. [Synopsis courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]